Hark! It’s The Harks, a Stockport-based work-in-progress currently offering two tracks to download for free from their myspace. I was pointed towards these and asked for my opinion. Here goes…
It wasn’t the most exhilarating of starting points; a drab myspace, the usual moody group shots, a pretty dry biography. I was prepared for forgettable, faintly emotional and poorly produced indie and ‘Last Call’ didn’t do a great deal to tackle my prejudices. The opening riff and the general starkness of the track reeked of a tamed Interpol with a swish of britpop not improving things, just localizing them.
I contemplated abandoning the review altogether after the opening bars of ‘I Know’ – its arpeggios hinted that some terrifyingly mediocre indie balladry might be following and I feared the worst. Imploring myself to keep listening, I was warmed when the wandering guitar was joined by a vocal straight from the glory days of 90s shoegaze. From there, as if my mind was being read, the opening soundscape stopped, chords and drums hit, and a song truly began.
Below the flat vocal and unfinished production of ‘I Know’ is the foundation of a classic pop song. The ‘I won’t be around’ refrain has an indie classicalism about it, staying with me and demanding replays. Goodness knows what it’ll do to teenage girls with crumbling relationships. Probably good things.
30th December 1915 – this is thought to be the date when a Public Address system was first used. It is humbling to know that a leap of only one hundred years takes us to a world of acoustic music by default. In this bygone world loudness is only available to large ensembles; a man alone can no longer fill a stadium with his songs or his kazoo.
Back in 2010, in southern England, there is a movement spreading named Pure Acoustica. This is not a record label or a genre as such; it is instead a collective of artists shepherded by the term’s founder, and fellow acoustic musician, Nick Tann. Nick is devoted to encouraging and promoting independent musicians – in particular acoustic musicians – and has a well-subscribed podcast that musicians/bands from around the globe are welcome to submit music for. Pure Acoustica is the alignment of Nick’s championing of independent artists with an ethos: the performance of music without microphones or amplifiers. While the pursuit of purity is nothing new, the intimacy that can be found in filling a room with an unaided voice is something worth pursuing. An audience must quieten to hear it; a performer must project their voice to an open space, not murmur softly into a hyped microphone like a latenight DJ.
But this article is not about a live performance, it is about singer-songwriter Tom Caulfield’s mini-album Bare Bones, recorded under the umbrella of Pure Acoustica. So how does Pure Acoustica translate to recording? An explanation can be found from Tom’s Bandcamp page.
[Bare Bones was] recorded the Pure Acoustica way; just a pair of nice microphones, all one take, no overdubs or drop-ins. No fancy effects, not even reverb. Just as if Tom was playing in your front room.
There is a problem when working to a strict ethos – it can sometimes sound better on paper than it does in practice. Audiences love to ‘see’ live performances, to match the artist’s physical effort with every nuance of the sound. But the abstract world of recorded sound is a cold blind place and it is for that reason that the quest for warmth and character on record has been so far-reaching.
Listening to Good You Got Away, with its hints of Bon Iver and its vivid storytelling, I am not wholly convinced by Tom’s vocal. I am sensitive to him holding back on some lines, while others flow much freer and without being able to watch him perform, the only story I can follow is what the vocal gives; the subtext of a man giving a single take is soon lost and forgotten. I’m inclined to wonder what it could have sounded like without the pressure of nailing it ‘all-in-one’ and with the facility to add a little reverb on his voice. This may have made an already sweet song even more magical.
Doomed To Be Beautiful is evocative of Tom Waits but lacking the incredible warmth of his recordings or grit of his voice. I do not think Mr Caulfield should aim to copy Mr Waits, but instead find a character to hang this delicate song upon. Personally, I would have loved to have heard some cello singing against Tom’s parched take. Catholic Girls confirms that Tom has a feel and talent for lyrics. ‘Everyone knows what Catholic Girls are like’ is a wonderful turn of phrase for a chorus and is a highlight of the album. Miss Valentines Last Stand continues with the rush of rhyming Jesus with Margaritas – very impressive – and the album closes with a gently funky guitar instrumental. I can’t help but wish it had some harmonica, or whistling or anything accompanying it, lovely though it is.
While Bare Bones is a fine document of Tom’s songs, this album trades magic for its ethos and this effectively stops it from flourishing. Pure Acoustica’s mandate makes excellent sense for live performances and I can thoroughly recommend going to see Tom and other Pure Acoustica artists live, in their natural habitat. For future recordings, I would suggest they either go to the great lengths of hiring chapels and candles to attempt the ultimate in one-take-wonders, or allow themselves a little more creative flexibility.
Buy a ‘Bare Bones’ CD (or download for free) here.
I’m having a really hard time reviewing this album, possibly because I want to like Austerlitz a lot more than I actually do.
The opening track ‘Walking into the Fire’ excited me a great deal. The organ riff that opens both the song and album is an inspired and clever hook that is sparse enough to give the rest of the band room to breathe and build on whilst suggesting enough of a sense of pulse to drive the verse’s tempo. The song reaches its triumphant climax during the middle-8, where we hear the bulk of the band pull out allowing a dense vocal harmony to take precedence before crashing back in with their interesting intricacies. As the tempo picks back up and the band race towards an uptempo coda, I found myself wanting more; a perfect album opener.
Sadly this is where it all starts to go slightly wrong for Austerlitz. The rest of the album caused me a great deal of confusion and disappointment, offering only rare moments of relief where the true potential of this band was allowed to present itself.
The second song ‘Smoothing my anger’ (odd song title), although a pleasant enough rock song is a fairly good starting point for my main criticisms of the album. First off, the singer (who I believe to be a French gentleman) seems to put on different accents throughout the album. In this song he goes from sounding like a Dick Van Dyke-esque mockney to some kind of flag saluting American patriot in a matter of minutes. This makes the delivery feel a little too insincere and contrived, which is a massive shame because on occasion he speaks allowing us to hear his real accent, which is utterly enchanting and lovely.
This song also seems to be a fairly massive departure stylistically from the first track on the album, which was an interesting and progressive joy to digest. This feels like a fairly normal rock song, which is a pretty big let down if you enjoy what came before as much as I did.
The rest of the album is full of perfectly acceptable rock songs that probably won’t offend you, which again is a little bit of a problem. The band possibly tries a little too hard to be interesting. Harmonic dissonances, unnecessary messing with meter and too many subtle layers of texture make listening a little too uncomfortable at points in the album. In fact that’s probably my main gripe with the whole album; too much fiddling. Everything is very busy a lot of the time and if it isn’t, it will be in a matter of seconds. Texture and ear candy are fine but need to be carefully sprinkled atop the substance with care, not thrown in as though a necessity only to spoil everything. The worst example of this can be heard in the penultimate song ‘Stay In Line’, which is so disjointed that no matter how many times you listen to it, you’ll have to allow a couple of minutes to adjust to whatever universe you need occupy for this to be remotely comfortable.
The album’s sign off ‘All That You Said’ is a welcome return to quality. Filled with French fancy and electronic accompaniment, the song builds to a superbly tasteful keyboard solo, which triggers the beginning of a genuinely lovely fade out that leaves you totally satisfied.
Despite all the above criticism there is definitely enough here to suggest that this is a band worth keeping an eye on. There are probably more tracks worth listening to than not and I have to admit that on a second and third listen, I found the album far more tolerable and approaching enjoyable. Hopefully a follow up effort will bring to light the talent and potential that I’m sure these chaps possess.
I’ve included a video for the belting album opener ‘Walking into The Fire’. The album can be purchased from here on iTunes.
If you want to be reviewed then please email me; monkeyhotel85@googlemail.com or follow me on twitter @monkeyhotel
Guvera is a music download platform that seems to be getting a lot of press lately. The team has put together a great video to explain what their service is all about. Let us know what you think and if you would want to put your music onto their service.
Will Page, Chief Economist at PRS lays out where the music business is at with some slides and charts. Recorded Thursday afternoon at Born to be Wide, Edinburgh.
The major declines are in the major labels, but overall the industry revenues are down because the whole industry is too focused on stopping illegal downloads instead of focusing on build innovation. I still find it very hard to believe anything the PRS reports.
Previously here on RouteNote we wrote about how one of our newest partners Spotify is launching very soon in the US market. However, today Spotify has new news, they have sent in their iPhone application for Apple to review. It is not guaranteed that the application will be accepted into the iTunes App store, mainly because it seems as those Spotify is a direct competitor to iTunes and their application may slow music sales in the iTunes store. Anyways, here is a preview of the new application.
This morning we got sent a great link from one of our artists about a glowing review of our service. Here at RouteNote we are always trying to improve our service and provide artists what they want. If anyone ever has any suggestions on what you want to see on our service then please get in touch and let us know.
A slow, red fire burns within me, steady and warm like coal. Its heat suffuses me, and little sparks and snaps off it, bearing my mind away – back to old friends and remembered joys. This glowing kernel resides inside me because I have seen Fat Freddy’s Drop play live. I was late. I missed the support act. I scarcely had time to buy a beer, and as soon as I had something wonderful happened in my ears.
They played two consecutive nights at the Camden Roundhouse and I was at the second – the last night of their UK tour before they went home to play the Aussie/NZ summer circuit. I loved their album before I went in, and I knew they had a reputation for being great live, but even so I was blown away. In case you don’t already know, they’re a Kiwi seven-piece dub and reggae outfit, that have released one live and one studio album, and they’re big… Sorry, make that BIG down under.
Their music is crafted. This isn’t something that’s been thrown together during a drunken evening in someone’s garage – this has been worked on, pieced, built and blended together. Usually their songs will have a big, warm, deep bass line, something that doesn’t seem complex, but then as the layers of music – a drumbeat, some vibes, maybe a flute, a soft vocal – come in, an unsuspected complexity evolves, the head of the bar isn’t where you thought it was to begin with, and the key’s changed and you’re surrounded by this lush, slow, throbbing mathmos of sound.
They’re not a band that will make you fight your way to the front to get your head down into the mosh pit. They’re not a band that will keep you bouncing like a frog on speed for ninety minutes. Fat Freddy’s Drop are a band who will wrap you up in music, draw you into their performance with textured, fluid, beautifully engineered noises, and a togetherness, a tightness that comes only from practice and professionalism. More than this, their live performances are unique and structured in such a way that they have a definite culmination – an apex that is all the more significant and memorable for the fact that their drops are few and far between.
The Roundhouse gig I attended took the songs I knew and elaborated upon them, with different takes on each. There are sections in their tracks where they take the rolling beat they’ve layered from ten different instruments weaving in and out, strip it back, and then put everything together for the most grinsome, satisfying drop. There was a section during which an acoustic tune had been spun into a long, pulsing, almost trance-like piece of music, totally different from the album version, and it was only after spinning the crowd into this ten-minute trance that they stopped… and let it drop.
Everyone. Every single person in that audience was smiling like a loon and dancing like a happy toddler in front of the stereo. It was a musical epiphany. It was like Jake and Elwood seeing the light. I wanted to do backflips. I can’t adequately describe how good their live show is. Even to describe the fun and antic japery of their sweaty, singlet wearing trombone player is more than I can do, let alone the whole glory of their horn section.
Fat Freddy’s studio album is called ‘Based On a True Story’. If you don’t like it, you can’t come to my birthday party. They should have released their second in October last year (’08), but here we are in March and it hasn’t been released yet, so all I can do is sit, and wait, and Hope.
A hot new addition to RouteNote.com this month has been the “eagerly awaited” release of Steph’s ‘Chasing Butterflies’. The catchy, up-beat (strangely familiar) track is mainly recognised from its radio and TV time for a CSL commercial, which aired in 2008. A release of the song had been insisted on by adoring fans.
“At last! This song has been stuck in so many people’s heads since it appeared on a certain TV advertisement last summer, and its kind of strange to finally hear the whole song. But worth waiting for. I really hope her other song ‘Beautiful’ appears on iTunes soon.”
“This artist is going to be another huge product of lancashire. I can’t wait for her second song to be released.”
If you like well produced, melodic, modern pop ‘Chasing Butterflies’ comes with high recommendations.
